So, I’m in the city of Calgary, Alberta, for a little stint, visiting family.  A city as clean and with as much character as a show home.

I’ll update my sales graph when I return to Vancouver, but things have been slow but steady with The Adventures of Whatley Tupper.  And I’m pleased with where things are, over 250 sales and new ones coming in every day or so.  I’m not putting any work into promotion for it these days, so this seems the be its natural rate of sales.   Nothing much, but more than I thought when I started back in August.  I thought, being an unknown author releasing a book among thousands of other unknown authors, that I’d be lucky to get a sale a week.   The fact that, somehow, customers find my books amazes me.  I wish I knew how much was word of mouth, how much was random searches, how much was dumb luck, how much was seeing an old review on a blog.

It’s easy to get hung up on comparisons, however, and it’s easy to find blogs or forum posts with successful authors detailing their many, many sales.  Like I’ve written before, I set up this blog because I wanted to detail the nitty-gritty details of my experiences knowing that I most likely would be average.  I think I’ve shown how an average unknown author does.  But it’s hard, when reading how author _______ just sold 1000 books in the last couple weeks and only started this summer, to think, “What am I doing wrong?”  I live a comfortable life a teacher in Canada (probably one of the best places in the world to be a teacher, as a side note) and I don’t need the money and I write because I love writing and now I publish because I love knowing that other people can read my work if they want to (or if they can find it).  But, lately, I find boards like KindleBoards have too many threads where people are declaring/boasting about sales and I don’t think it’s healthy.  I dare you to click on that link and not find a thread on the first page about someone’s new milestone.  I understand the pride one feels when these sales numbers are reached, but there seems to be too much focus on this of late.  It feels tacky.  I feel that writers are artists and we shouldn’t be talking about sales so much.

And I realize the irony here.  This is why I’m writing this post.  This blog began as a detail of my sales history.  But I’m growing bored with that, and you can definitely see from my posts that I’m not bragging.  I’ve received $111.13 so far in four months.  I’d make that much at McDonald’s in a couple of shifts.

Or maybe I’m just a complete hypocrite.   This is entirely possible.  Just because I don’t think I’m a hypocrite means nothing.  Nobody thinks they are a hypocrite.  Interesting.

Anyhow, let’s wrap this up, high-school essay style, and reiterate my thesis statement (if there was one):  In conclusion, the online indie-author community seems be getting increasingly focused on sales and money, and perhaps I’m part of the problem.